Edible fat based, flavoured fat systems suitable for use in baked goods and snacks are known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,431,945 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,643 or U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,735. From these documents butter based flakes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. '945. These flakes are free of sugar and contain a lot of predried butter fat and high contents of dried milk solids. Particulars of the fats that can be applied are not given, all that is said about the nature of the fats, that can be applied is that they are related to butter fat. According to U.S. Pat. No. '643 cheese based flakes can be obtained along lines that are very similar to the lines set out above for U.S. Pat. No. '945. These flakes contain high levels of dried cheese solids while the fats that can be applied are the same or very similar to the fats according to above U.S. Pat. No. '945. According to U.S. Pat. No. '735 cinnamon based flakes can be obtained that contain large amounts of granulated sugar while the fat is again a butter fat or a fat closely related to butter fat.
GB 2 176 143 discloses fat flakes or fat granules, wherein the fat applied is selected from margarine, butter or lard (p.1,1.13-14). These flakes are used for cooking purposes and not as an ingredient for the preparation of bakery products, wherein the flakes must give a good flavour boost and must provide the bakery products with a good snap. As margarine and butter are fat emulsions containing about 20 wt % of water the use thereof in flakes that contain sugars is very limited because the sugars will be dissolved in the water phase of the fat emulsion and cannot contribute to the flavour boost nor to the snap of the products. Moreover the use of butter also has the drawbacks set out above. Lard is a fat that is relatively soft and thus has a low hardness therefore the use thereof in flakes will lead to unacceptable products
U.S. Pat. No. 5,690,985 discloses liquid edible emulsion spreads wherein the fat phase contains high levels of liquid oils. Therefore these fats will be too soft for our purposes. In order to provide some structuring capacities to the fats 2 to 10 wt % of trans fat is added to the compositions. Thus this document is completely silent about fat flakes as we aim for whereas the fats that are disclosed are indicated for use in spreads only , which is a use that is completely different from our intended use.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,588 concerns with the use of fats with at least 40% polyunsaturated fatty acids in fats for margarines. Nothing is disclosed about the use of these fats in fat flakes for bakery applications that are supposed to provide a flavour boost and a snap. Moreover the fats according to this document have relatively high trans contents that we prefer to avoid.
We found that flakes with the composition as given above did not have a proper hardness leading to products when applied in baked bakery products with insufficient texture and oral mouthfeel, in particular to products that lacked snap and flavour boost, due to the poor flavour release of these flakes. Therefore we performed a study to find out whether we could find novel products wherein these insufficiencies were improved. Further we tried to find compositions that were easier to process than the known compositions.